


bright sunny days, dark sacred nights

by hawkelf



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/F, F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 16:14:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2513996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawkelf/pseuds/hawkelf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Sif/Jane/Thor drabbles, in no particular order and without guaranteed relevance to each other. Mainly reposts from my tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a little inevitable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor/Jane, Jane & Sif; Thor doesn't think things through, and a microwave pays the cost

It was weird for Jane, the first time it came up, but that was kind of her own fault. Thor had somewhat mentioned, before he left for New York, that someone from Asgard might be stopping by at some point. One of his friends. And that he hoped Jane and his friend got along, that they had a lot in common, and she shouldn’t worry about it. Then he’d started swinging his hammer in that way that always managed to kind of reminder her of a cowboy from an old movie swinging a lasso, and he was gone.

That was about a week ago.

Yesterday, Sif showed up.

Jane spent the first two hours wondering what Thor was talking about. If he thought them both being women was “having a lot in common,” there were going to be some serious words. She was not putting up with that.

Sif was a tall, quiet warrior woman who was surprised that Thor wasn’t home and seemed a little uncertain about staying when Jane said she could. She was also either less able or much less willing to talk to Jane about Asgardian science and magic than Thor was.

Darcy had spent the previous month first on a Parks and Rec binge and then on figuring out what kind of dog everyone was. Thor had been a St. Bernard. Jane was pretty sure Sif would’ve been a Doberman Pinscher. A concerned one. Named Xena.

After Sif was bedded down for the night on the couch, Jane sat in her bedroom, googling her and trying not to feel guilty and socially inept. After all, they’d gone to a used book store to find out more about Thor, way back when gods were impossible.

She couldn’t really wave away the guilt of clicking on the link to wikipedia. though. And yeah, she’d always known that wikipedia was completely questionable and basically untrustworthy, but it was telling her that Sif’s hair was golden, and that she was a goddess of wheat.

And matrimony.

Because she was married to Thor.

Jane had to remind herself that she was a person of science, with many degrees and much knowledge, who had traveled to other worlds, seen “magic,” and been able to make the sensible connections to Earth science. She did not believe in karma. Sif was not married to Thor because wikipedia.

After all, Sif was not married to Thor. Thor would have told her. It would definitely have come up. That was a weird thing. Like the hair thing. Did Loki really chop off Sif’s hair? If so, obviously it had grown back, that was what hair did, hair didn’t just stop growing completely because some stupid egotist in training got scissor-happy. But human mythology hadn’t been this completely off the mark about Thor. There were some iffy bits, but still.

When morning happened, Jane had slept but hadn’t really resolved any of her many questions. The more she thought about it, the more curious she was. Especially about the hair thing. If it was true, why wasn’t Sif’s hair blonde anymore? What could Loki have used to cut Sif’s hair, that could have such an effect? Were Thor and Sif married? Were they ex-spouses? Was that awkward to ask about? Would Sif let Jane run some tests on her hair? Would she let Jane braid her hair? Her hair looked soft. And scientifically potentially really intriguing in a keep Bruce on speed-dial because it was probably outside of Jane’s area of expertise kind of way.

Then the smoke detector went off, and Jane ran out of her bedroom to find Sif throwing a bowl of water at the very aflame microwave.

"Oh my god!" Jane thought Darcy had taken the batteries out of the smoke detector. Then she dove for the fire extinguisher, quickly brandishing it with the slightly embarrassing ease of practice. "Move!"

Sif glanced at her then sidestepped out of the way, hands in the air. Jane extinguished the fire. With the fire extinguisher. And decided to work on how she’d word that when she inevitably told Darcy later. Putting the extinguisher back where it belonged, Jane pushed her hair out of her face and turned to look at the warrior goddess who’d set her microwave on fire, might be married to Jane’s boyfriend, and somehow still had amazing hair, even though she’d obviously slept on it and had smudges of soot on her face.

Sif also had this weird sort of expression on her face, somewhere between sheepish and approving. Maybe admiring? Except probably not, because Jane was a mess in a giant t-shirt (Thor’s) and boxers (also Thor’s). She hadn’t had a chance to change, because fire. And Thor was gone.

"Are yo—"

"My ap—"

Jane closed her mouth and smiled politely. Took in the beautiful, lean lines of obvious warrior muscle on Sif whose romantic involvement with her boyfriend was up in the air and potentially really, really awkward. “Go ahead, sorry.”

Sif smiled back at her, maybe gratefully? Definitely not menacingly. Jane had seen that expression on Sif in Asgard. It was impressive. “I apologize. I’d hoped to eat without waking you, but I’ve never been much one for even rudimentary cooking.”

"Yeah, that microwave confused Thor a little too. And Erik. And me. It was kind of needlessly complicated." Jane pushed her hair back and tried to be cool. Then she dug under the sink for some sponges or something, telling herself that she was definitely imagining that Sif was watching her. "Hey, can I ask you something? Just? While we clean all this up?"

She hit her head on the bottom of the sink, standing up.

THAT was definitely wikipedia karma.

Sif unplugged the microwave and poked at the very dead box experimentally, apparently judging it still too hot to move. “Of course. Ask me anything that you might wish to know.”

Jane kind of got the feeling that Sif didn’t give people that kind of leeway very often, corroborated by what fragments of Thor’s stories she could remember Sif featuring in. She fidgeted with the nozzle on a bottle of cleaner she didn’t remember buying. Eco-friendly. Probably the intern, then. “Uh. Yeah. I was just— the internet seems to think you and Thor might be married.”

Sif stopped whatever she was trying to do - Jane wondered if her lack of cooking skills extended to kitchen cleanup - to look at Jane and blink. Then she laughed. “Hardly.”

"Oh." Well, that was even more awkward. Jane was less than sure what to do next.

"Do not mistake me, Jane," and now she was coming over and taking Jane’s hands and wow Jane would probably never get over the height on Asgardians. "Thor is a wonderful man whom I care about a great deal. And he is very easy to look at. But if it were not for you, and your influence, he would not be a suitable match for any sane woman."

Jane felt herself going pink. The whole warm smiling thing Sif was doing, and still with the hand-holding and the looking into eyes, that wasn’t helping. “Oh. Thank you?”

"You are a marvelous woman, I am certain, and I am very eager to know you better. But first, I must replace your… microwave? And leave you to this cleaning, lest I start a bigger fire."

And, before Jane could really recover enough to react, Sif was out the door. Apparently in search of a microwave. In that red outfit thing that she wore under her armor.

Jane felt really unprepared for the next few days. Really unprepared. In maybe a good way.

She needed to call Thor.


	2. it's not the '70s anymore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> struggling artist AU; Thor/Sif, build-up to Sif/Thor/Jane

Thor’s dad had been a sculptor, got into the business back in the ’70s when people bought anything, loved new ideas, and every artist knew at least three people who had made it. His mother was a weaver, and when he was little and they still lived in a remodeled chicken coop, her loom had taken up half the house, the clacking lulling her children to sleep.  
  
Sif was born in a commune with no real idea who her mother was, except maybe one of the seven women who left when she was four. When her brother left at seventeen she chose to go with him. Sif spent that first year, nine years old and new to the real world, sneaking out of his dorm before dawn to go to real school, collecting cans and scrap until dusk to help survive.  
  
Jane’s parents were doctors. She grew up in the suburbs, went to college and got a BS, not a BA. No one was sure what exactly happened.  
  
———  
  
When Sif was ten, she and Heimdall bought a camper off an old hippie and started living on a patch of land just outside the city. The farmer didn’t care, said he’d gotten rid of the goats he used to raise there. It was only a half hour bike ride to the bus stop. Sif rode on the handle bars, and in the snow the farmer’s wife drove her to school in trade for shoveling their long driveway. Summer meant exploring the wooded roadsides, digging up dandelions and wild onions, pretending to be a bandit.  
  
When Thor was twelve, he and his brother claimed an abandoned house down the road as their fort. The woodworking he learned that summer, under half an eye’s supervision from Dad, laid groundwork he didn’t think about until much later, halfway through his sophomore year of college. The girl who broke into their fort in August just never seemed to leave. Not even when Loki cut off all her hair.  
  
———  
  
Sif was sixteen when Thor’s mom started teaching summer classes at the college. She had her GED and thought she was done with school, RV to herself and freedom in her grasp. Frigg dragged her along to one workshop, promising new curtains for an hour playing gofer. An hour turned into two, someone sat her at a wheel with a lump of clay, and Sif was sunk. She stayed in school. They taught her how to make vessels as large as her brother and how to build a kiln. But this wasn’t the ’70s anymore.  
  
Thor and Loki went away for college. Loki excelled. Thor made new friends, flunked out in his second pointless year, and tried to move home. His dad pointed out he had a car, told him to get a job, and changed the locks. Sif, good old Sif, let him move in but they had to move to a trailer park. Farmers don’t live forever and sometimes have less open-minded children. Thor found a job working maintenance for the college. The old guy running the place let him have free reign in the shop, and sometimes that felt like the only way Thor stayed sane. When Sif pointed out their lack of space, he stopped giving neighbors lawn furniture and started working small.  
  
Being the only girl to survive four years in the entire science department sucked balls, but when Jane was a freshman she dated a girl in the art department. It crashed and burned halfway through the semester, but Jane was already stuck in a painting elective. After that she just kind of painted when she was drunk. Kept the hands busy. She didn’t realize how much the men in her department drove her to drink until she tried to move out of the apartment she’d had those four years. Grad school was looking a lot less great with every trip carrying canvases down the stairs, every minute her parents harped about it. She probably just needed a break. One year as a hospital lab tech couldn’t hurt that much. And her new, smaller apartment was cute. Right by an art school with a never-ending canvas sale. Crazy coincidences.  
  
Officially, Sif’s degree meant that she could teach. Realistically, she lasted two months before crashing into the worst case of burnout her superintendent could remember. Sure, no one expects to keep a first year teacher, but this was kind of extreme. Heart in throat, Sif was forced to resign. With the job went her last access to a kiln. For the first time, she had no plan. Heimdall had no advice.  
  
It took her three weeks to find a job, working at the printing center at Office Depot. Meantime she built Thor a storage shed, a return to a scrapping past. He’d never felt more helpless, or more in love with her. It was about time he did something about it. Not quite there yet, but about. It was coming. Meantime, he learned some silversmithing from Fandral, an up-coming jeweler with a need for custom displays. His shed turned into a small work studio, with the neighbor’s dog Dragon kenneled to guard it.  
  
Sif made hundreds of bakelite figures and vessels in their tiny stove, though she hated the stuff. It kept her hands moving for a clearance price, kept the too many Volstagg children entertained when she watched them for the generous, machinist neighbors. She didn’t charge, but it kept them in repairs and vegetables all the same.  
  
Jane struggled in her new city, but couldn’t quite bring herself to fill out grad school applications. Getting a roommate helped. Darcy was fiery, deeply interested in the human side of the world, and more into Jane’s art than her science. She refused to let Jane destroy everything, just some things, and dragged her out to gallery openings and art museums. She claimed it was because she wanted to tell people she knew a real artist, rejected Jane’s protests, and drew stick figure scenes on their fridge in dry-erase marker. In her second year out of school, Jane felt herself start to breathe again. Her conversations with her parents grew more stilted by the phone call, but her laughter between them got a little freer. She decided there were worse lives to live than hers.  
  
Darcy still couldn’t get her to call herself an artist, though.  
  
———  
  
Thor sold his first piece of jewelry, a necklace of solid wood with silver inlay, the month Sif turned twenty-one. It was only consignment to Fandral’s shop so it wasn’t entirely, truly sold yet, but it was still money, still actual success. When he told her, Sif kissed him right on the mouth and that was that. The money went to two ice cream cones and finally replacing the camper’s gas lines before they killed someone. They were dating. The world was gold to Thor. If only they could find access to a kiln.  
  
Sif started avoiding the art store and got a promotion to manager at Office Depot. Thor kept a shoebox filled with napkins she’d drawn, doodled, or written glaze recipes on. Someday, he maintained, she would need them. But he didn’t tell her about it.  
  
Summer break ended, reminding Jane that Darcy, the person most supportive of her education procrastination, was the only person she still knew in college. Darcy quit her inflexible gas station gig and picked up a new one at some office store. She bragged about her manager letting her print papers for free, drooled over the hot maintenance guy she’d found “hidden away” on campus, and continued to lock herself out of the apartment on a predictable, if not regular, basis. Jane was more concerned about the possibility of stalking charges than either of the other situations, especially when Darcy started taking pictures.  
  
Though yes, he was definitely, extremely attractive. Didn’t the school have some policy against staff working shirtless? And no, she really, really didn’t want to know more, actually. She refused to let Darcy drag her down with her. One of them needed to stay out of jail.  
  
———  
  
The third time in two months that Darcy forgot her keys, Jane caught it on her way out the door. Stuffing them in her pocket, she texted her roommate a warning that she’d be dropping them off over her lunch, and then forgot about it completely for four hours.  
  
Darcy wasn’t the only absent-minded roommate, maybe, whatever. Jane found them again as she finished off her lunchtime chocolate shake and McDonald’s salad. That was the important thing. And the way she rushed over to Office Depot would hopefully have Darcy declaring her some sort of real life super hero.  
  
Especially because she totally, completely missed hitting one of the managers with her giant clunker of a car by at least a full inch.  
  
And Darcy had a lot of explaining to do for not mentioning that her favorite manager was also really unfairly stunning. Beautiful. Stunning. And nice and unflappable and amused by Jane’s inability to speak real words at first, and also an artist (she asked about the paint on Jane’s elbow, why didn’t Darcy tell her about the paint), and —  
  
dating Maintenance Hotty. As Jane found out when, leaving Darcy’s keys with Sif the manager, she really did actually sort of run smack dab into him.  
  
The parking lot was really stupid.  
  
She’d only started backing out, he insisted he was fine.  
  
Darcy still taunted her about jail, and for a few seconds there Jane wondered if it was too late to leave the city and go to grad school in like England maybe.  
  
Then, putting a ziploc of ice on her boyfriend’s leg, Sif told him that Jane was a painter.  
  
Thor’s face lit up, he asked about her preferred medium, if she had a website, and Jane started wondering if this wasn’t all just a dream.


	3. getting to know you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor/Jane, build-up to Sif/Jane/Thor, Jane & Sif; I write about Jane and Sif getting to know each other a lot.
> 
> written before I saw Thor 2, so a little canon-divergent

Sif’s first modern visit to Midgard without Thor was initially met with much confusion from all who heard of it (so mostly SHIELD), but particularly from the woman who found her on her doorstep, where she’d thought to instead find the morning paper. In fact, she dropped her coffee.

"Oh my god! Wha— I wasn’t expecting any— Where’s—"

Sif interrupted her with a raised hand and a smile that on most Asgardian women would be called shy. “Thor sends his regards, but is detained elsewhere by duty.” Her expression gained some surety with those words, pride for her lord and the man this human had helped him awaken himself to.

Jane stumbled for a reply. “That can’t be why you’re here, is it?” Sif was hardly a mere messenger, someone she pictured Thor sending simply because he felt like saying ‘thinking of you.’ Her mug had broken, and coffee was trickling down the side of her building’s stoop into the much-neglected flower bed. At least it couldn’t make things worse for the dead weeds. Sif’s gaze followed Jane’s, and before a protest could be uttered the warrior was stooping at the scientist’s feet to pick up still-warm ceramic shards.

"No. I am here because I wish to know you, Jane Foster." Sif looked up at the other woman, face calm, but otherwise difficult to read. There was definitely curiosity there, and something else, but what could not be said for certain.

"Oh." Because what else did a person say to something like that, coming from not only such a woman as Sif, but also a… Thor’s childhood friend? Who had showed up out of the blue at six(!) in the morning?

"Come in?"

*

And thus began one of the more unusual three months of Jane’s life. Though that was starting to become quite the competition. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it was one of the most unusual three months of Jane’s almost-completely-unrelated-to-work-in-any-way, home life.

For one thing, she suddenly found herself in possession of a very erstwhile and politely stubborn couch surfer. One who seemed to have no intention of going anywhere. And who, after being caught using the ludicrously heavy, ancient Kirby for weight training, started doing basic housework while Jane was working. Among other things. Sif never seemed bored, somehow.

And then there was the Sunday when Jane awoke to an empty apartment, nearly all signs of her temporary roommate tidied away like she’d never been there. It was odd (perhaps a little sad?), but she was barely awake, so the morning routine took over.

Coffee, mug, out to get the paper.

And there was Sif, kneeling in that practically forgotten, sorry excuse for a flower bed. She’d acquired a hand trowel from somewhere, as well as some sturdy-looking but cheerful flowers.

"Are early morning miracles just an Asgardian thing?" Jane blurted, staring, unable to help recalling the discovery that Thor made great breakfasts.

Sif looked up at her dumbfounded expression and laughed. “This is hardly a miracle, Jane.”

The new garden flourished, miracle or no (and hadn’t Erik once said the Ancient Norse believed Sif goddess of the harvest?).

It quickly turned out that she’d traded self-defense lessons to an entire Girl Scout Troop for the plants. From the sound of the story, Sif would have taught the girls greenery or no and considered the flowers nearly free. The troop leaders, on the other hand, were pretty confident that they’d gotten the better end of the deal.

Shortly after that, somehow Jane found herself a special guest at a rare camping trip out of the city, funded by Stark Industries with a check signed by Pepper herself (causing Jane to wonder what sort of network her lady warrior friend might be building in her absences). There, she taught girls who had never truly seen stars about the secrets that lay amongst them, and Sif never left her side.

*

Thor visited approximately three times in those three months, for various spans of time, though there was the chance that he and Sif were conversing when Jane wasn’t home. That wasn’t suspicion brought on by jealousy; the trust Jane had in Thor, and her ever-growing knowledge of and affection for Sif told her that would be silly. They were open, loyal people who cared deeply and sincerely, and she was confident in that.

No, it was suspicion brought on by Thor looking back and forth between the two women when he thought Jane wasn’t looking, grinning his head off and making faces. They had to be Up To Something. A prank or surprise, or some sort of in-joke, possibly centuries old (and didn’t that make her head spin a bit). Yet nothing seemed to ever come of it, and most often Sif would catch his look and shrug, rolling her eyes and maybe, increasingly, giving the man a light shove. Likely it was something, but something that apparently Sif was keeping in check for the time being, so Jane put it out of her mind.

*

When she decided to introduce Sif to movie theaters, she found an eccentric little place that showed movies from the ’80s. The warrior had a hard time sitting still through the entire film in those old, squeaky seats with their shot springs, but somehow they made it through Ferris Bueller’s Day Off okay. Sif was full of questions by the time they left their seats, which Jane decided meant the trip had been a success, so they stopped at a bookstore to get a book on Chicago on the way home.

Books on the education system of America, types of fast food, and yoga also made it into the pile, but it just added variety to their night-time conversations and maybe a little more purpose to their weekends.

*

Once, Jane dared to wonder aloud when Sif planned to return home, to Asgard. If there were more important things for her to do than stay up late trading stories with scientists until one of them nodded off.

Sif simply shook her head, snagging another piece of pizza, and said, “I wish to now more of you still. If that is permissible.”

It didn’t take much thinking for Jane to agree that that was very permissible indeed.

*

One night somewhere into the second month, Darcy convinced Jane they needed to take Sif out drinking. It devolved surprisingly quickly into introducing Sif to the definition of “misandry,” and then into some weird feminist drinking game they made up on the spot, and then the memory got fuzzy and Sif definitely carried Jane home.

From a police station?

Neither Darcy nor Sif would fill in the details.

*

Introducing Sif to the internet was quickly followed by introducing her to the public library, and swearing to never introduce her to Wikipedia.

Discovering that Sif was working out in the nearest park, often before dawn, was its own adventure.

*

At the rough end of three months, Thor was four days into a week-long visit. It was morning, weekend, coffee, newspaper, Thor making breakfast, Sif watching from where she leaned nearby. Routine. Nice.

Very nice, actually, and while Jane wasn’t sure when it had become a routine, she couldn’t knock it, couldn’t actually imagine a morning without at least one of them knocking about, being much more cheerful about the AM than she was.

It took half her cup of coffee before she noticed the intent expression on Sif’s face as she held murmured conference with Thor, their words pitched too low to make out, the way the other woman’s eyes would occasionally flicker to Jane, to the door. The way Thor’s voice had taken on a reassuring tone, as if Sif needed soothed in some matter. The way he would occasionally take his eyes or a hand away from the stove, lock Sif’s gaze, clasp her elbow briefly, reassuringly.

Something Was Up, and when had thinking in capitals become a necessity of her life? With the Asgardians, likely, and it was with a pang that she realized the possibility that her time with Sif was coming to an end. She found she wasn’t ready for that at all, not yet. They hadn’t covered everything. There was still much more to know.

"What’s going on?" she asked, and both Asgardians looked at her, guilt flickering briefly across their faces. "Is everything okay?"

The two exchanged another glance, and that couldn’t be entirely positive. “All is well of the moment,” Sif told her, slowly, though Jane could tell she spoke the truth. “We have received word from Asgard, and I must return immediately to attend certain matters.”

"Oh." Because what else could a person say to that, to one such as Sif, to the duty that she carried, and to all that had been built in the previous months and was still building in unknown ways, that might now simply be gone?

"I had not intended to leave yet," Sif assured her, "but Thor will be able to stay. His business is still here."

Thor nodded, clasping Sif’s shoulder, and Jane realized that he too was not entirely happy with Sif’s departure. It was written across his face, he was concerned. She’d definitely need to be filled in on the situation, as soon as she could drag it out of him.

"Will you come back?" If Sif promised to return, she would do so. "I mean, we’ve still got a lot of ground to cover, right?"

Sif came over to her and smiled, kissed her cheek. “I would very much like to do so, yes.”

Jane thought she heard Thor rumble out something about making sure he’d stick around for that, then, but she was too busy pulling Sif into a hug.

"I’m holding you to that," and she was probably addressing them both.


End file.
